FIRST LOOK — STIMSON CENTER TO RELEASE REPORT ON PENTAGON COST-CUTTING: “Eyeing the Pentagon’s continuing struggle with sequestration and other budget cuts, the Washington-based Stimson Center think tank is proposing an array of management and other reforms that could save $50 billion a year.

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A new report by the nonpartisan center — authored by a committee including two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a former Air Force chief of staff, a former chief of naval operations and two retired four-star generals — also urges changes to the force structure and other modernization.

“Although we never would have chosen this course, we are now confronted by it. Even so, we believe that with appropriate planning, U.S. national interests can be defended at the mandated lower level of defense spending,’ the authors said in the report, obtained by POLITICO. ‘Lower spending incurs greater risk, but the 9 percent real reduction required can be achieved at an acceptable level of risk — if it is linked to a conscious strategy and implemented in a deliberate manner.’”

PENTAGON ON SHUTDOWN WATCH: Pentagon Press Secretary George Little told reporters yesterday that a shutdown would put “severe hardships on an already stressed workforce and is totally unnecessary,” but the department is updating its plans anyway. If there is a shutdown at the beginning of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1, all members of the military would still report to work, Little said, but the Pentagon is still determining which civilian employees would be exempt or furloughed.

And Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter wrote in a department-wide memo that “while military personnel would continue in a normal duty status, a large number of our civilian employees would be temporarily furloughed. To prepare for this possibility, we are updating our contingency plans for executing an orderly shutdown of activities that would be affected by a lapse in appropriations.

He does not detail which civilians would be considered exempt from a shutdown and not furloughed. Read the full memo:http://politico.pro/16uJvM4

AND THEY'RE OFF! POLITICO's Jake Sherman and Manu Raju on the beginning of the shutdown saga on Capitol Hill: "Senate Democratic leaders may only keep the government open for less than two months as part of a deal to end the latest fiscal crisis now consuming Washington, sources said Monday. Monday began a week of high-level maneuvering on Capitol Hill, with each of the four leaders beginning to weigh how to proceed on what could become a defining moment for the 113th Congress and Barack Obama’s presidency.

"The central questions at the heart of the wrangling is the funding of Obamacare, the three-year-old law that swept many congressional conservatives into Washington." http://politi.co/19yxgjx

IT’S TUESDAY: Thanks for reading Morning Defense, where we're cheering yet another Cardinals victory over the hometown Nationals. Sorry we're not sorry about that elimination, Washington fans. Your host will be taking a turn in the guest chair of C-SPAN’s Washington Journal today during the 9 a.m. hour — be sure to tune in for the latest in political news. Send your latest defense news, tips or feedback our way at jsummers@politico.com. And don’t forget to follow on Twitter at @ jmsummers @ morningdefense and @ PoliticoPro.

TOP TALKER — EX-FBI AGENT PLEADS GUILTY IN AP LEAK CASE, via POLITICO's Josh Gerstein: "The Justice Department says it’s solved one of the most significant leak cases in recent memory: disclosure of an Al Qaeda airliner-bombing plot last year that had reportedly been penetrated by western intelligence services. Former FBI agent Donald Sachtleben, 55, admitted in court papers Monday that he disclosed classified information about the plot to a journalist. The court filings don’t identify the reporter or the news outlet, but a federal law enforcement official who asked not to be named told POLITICO the leaks in question were to The Associated Press.

“Sachtleben, a bomb expert who was working as a contract technician at the FBI lab at the time of the leak last year, has agreed to serve a 43-month sentence on one charge of disclosing national defense information and one charge of retaining classified information at his home. He also agreed to serve 97 months on two child pornography offenses to which he previously pled guilty." http://politi.co/16mDwQv

NAVY DIDN’T HAVE FULL INFO ON NAVY YARD SHOOTER, via POLITICO’s Kate Brannen: “The Navy is defending its 2008 decision to grant a secret clearance to the man who killed 12 people at the Navy Yard last week, saying it didn’t have all of the details about his criminal record. Aaron Alexis had been arrested in Seattle in 2004 for shooting out the tires of a car during what he described to police as an anger-fueled blackout.

“As details about Alexis’s life emerged over the last week, this incident — in which Alexis told police he blacked out for an hour and remained disturbed over the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks — appeared to be a red flag that should have turned up in a clearance investigation. A senior Navy official said Monday that the service never knew the full story of what Alexis did that day when it was trying to determine whether to grant him secret clearance four years later. The official briefed reporters at the Pentagon on the condition that he not be identified.” http://politico.pro/15QefvB

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HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE DEMS SEEK INFO ON NAVY RADIO PROBLEMS: Rep. Henry Waxman, the committee’s top Democrat, and Rep Anna Eshoo want to know why first responders’ radios failed during last week’s deadly shooting, forcing workers to resort to using runners and personal cell phones. In a letter to leaders at the Commerce Department and the Federal Communications Commission, Waxman and Eshoo urge the agencies to determine what can be done to address teh problems and provide an initial report by Oct. 21.

“It is imperative we understand what happened to these communication systems and why,” Waxman and Eshoo wrote.

BUT THE NAVY PLAYS DEFENSE: "Archived recordings indicate that the radios used by Naval District Washington (NDW) security personnel worked as designed throughout the event at the Washington Navy Yard," a Navy official says. "There are a few areas inside BLDG 197 that, by design, block the transmission and reception of radio frequencies. These areas comprise only a small portion of the building."

HAPPENING TODAY: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y) will speak at the Response Systems to Adult Sexual Assault Crimes Panel at the U.S. District Court for D.C. Look for coverage of the two-day meeting via POLITICO’s Darren Samuelsohn.

OBAMA FACES VEXING FOREIGN POLICY CHALLENGES AT U.N., via The Washington Post's Scott Wilson and Anne Gearan: "For the first time in his presidency, Barack Obama will use his annual visit to the United Nations to manage the most pressing set of foreign policy issues before him, focusing his address and diplomatic energy on the crisis in Syria and on Iran’s nuclear program this week.

“Obama has in the past used the annual forum of the U.N. General Assembly to define America’s place in the world — from his first, course-correction speech in 2009 to last year’s defense of U.S. values in the weeks after the deadly attack on U.S. outposts in Benghazi, Libya.This year, his senior advisers say, the president will focus more tightly on developments in the Middle East, most notably in Syria, where more than 100,000 people are estimated to have been killed in 21 / 2 years of conflict. Obama will call for broader regional engagement to end the Syrian civil war and build upon President Bashar al-Assad’s recent agreement to give up his chemical weapons program after the threat of a U.S. military strike." http://wapo.st/16uKV9t

WHITE HOUSE WON'T RULE OUT ROUHANI MEETING, via POLITICO's Isaac Dovere: "Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters traveling with Obama to New York for the United Nations General Assembly that the United States remains 'open to engagement with the Iranian government at a variety of levels' to proceed diplomatically with Tehran, but that the only interaction currently confirmed is Secretary of State John Kerry’s meeting with the P5+1 group and the Iranian foreign minister.

MUST READ — THE SHADOW COMMANDER, via Dexter Filkins for The New Yorker: "[Qassem] Suleimani took command of the Quds Force fifteen years ago, and in that time he has sought to reshape the Middle East in Iran’s favor, working as a power broker and as a military force: assassinating rivals, arming allies, and, for most of a decade, directing a network of militant groups that killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq.

“The U.S. Department of the Treasury has sanctioned Suleimani for his role in supporting the Assad regime, and for abetting terrorism. And yet he has remained mostly invisible to the outside world, even as he runs agents and directs operations. 'Suleimani is the single most powerful operative in the Middle East today,' John Maguire, a former C.I.A. officer in Iraq, told me, 'and no one’s ever heard of him.'" http://nyr.kr/18SvloV

THE COMEBACK QUEEN: Jason Horowitz writes for Vogue on Susan Rice's political future: "After more than four years as ambassador, Rice is triumphantly returning to Washington as President Obama’s national security adviser. It is an astonishing reversal of fortune considering that not so long ago her hopes of replacing Hillary Clinton as secretary of state — and nearly her entire meteoric career — crash-landed into the controversy around the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

“President Obama seemed to bow to GOP criticism by passing over Rice — a loyalist, friend, and sometime dinner guest — leaving her stranded at the U.N. Then, in a reassertion of his presidential prerogative, he appointed her to a White House position beyond the reach of Senate confirmation and Republican opposition. By joining a second-term administration that has consolidated foreign-policy decision-making, Rice will now exercise a degree of influence from her corner West Wing office that easily marks her as one of the most powerful women in the country." http://bit.ly/1b78wFV

-- The U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University says North Korea issued a test launch of a long-range rocket engine in August. Defense News: http://bit.ly/1bC1urZ

-- A Navy lieutenant, who has emerged as vocal military advocate for equal same-sex treatment, is joining a lawsuit against the Obama administration. Navy Times: http://bit.ly/1eCO53Y

-- Destroying Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, even if the U.S. finds willing partners in Russia and Syria, will be very difficult. The New York Times: http://nyti.ms/19uA5mP

-- The Egyptian Cairo Court for Urgent Matters banned the Muslim Brotherhood and confiscated its assets Monday. The New York Times: http://nyti.ms/15nj0sE

-- 8 reasons why the U.N. General Assembly is important this year. The Washington Post: http://wapo.st/15Q2uVV

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Authors:

About The Author

Juana Summers is a political reporter for POLITICO Pro. She joined POLITICO in 2010, at the start of the Republican presidential primary, and contributed to POLITICO's campaign reporting on the primary as well as the general election.

Summers covered Missouri politics for a variety of outlets prior to joining POLITICO including the Kansas City Star, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and KBIA-FM, the NPR affiliate in central Missouri. Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post and the Austin American-Statesman.

She earned her bachelor's degree in journalism from the Missouri School of Journalism, where she is also a candidate for a master's degree in journalism.

Summers is also a guest host for C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" and served one term as a board member for the Online News Association, a nonprofit membership organization for digital journalists.